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Friday, February 23, 2007

Blogging admitted to Olympics Shock! - MouthoftheMersey

In a sensational move, the IOC has sanctioned blogging as an Olympic sport for 2008, replacing athletics.

“We have introduced blogging to reflect the technological world in which we all live,” said an unknown man wearing a blazer with very shiny buttons and pockets bulging with brown envelopes.

It wasn’t long before Paula Radcliffe led the protests from Britain. “I’ve spent all my adult life running 100 miles a week for the chance of winning Olympic Gold, and that chance has been taken away from me and offered to a bunch of fat blokes who spend all their time writing about Liverpool’s 70’s and 80’s squads. I just don’t think a pithy point about Ian Rush’s goals per game ratio summed over both his Liverpool spells, as compared to Thierry Henry’s last two seasons at Arsenal, is the sort of thing the Olympic ideal should reward.”

Lord Coe soon weighed into the row. “Whilst we obviously welcome the opportunity to save money on the 2012 infrastructure construction, a world class sports stadium represents a better legacy for London than a few shrill put downs from Barry Glendenning that don’t even come up on the Guardian’s own search facility.”

Criticism for the surprise decision was not universal however. HB, a man with a broadband connection and an insatiable desire to respond to any criticism of Liverpool Football Club, welcomed the move. “This is Britain’s best chance of gold. We lead the world in both the “angry and abusive” and the all-important “best use of arbitrary statistics to make an argument” disciplines”.

Britain is also ranked second in the “most creative use of embedded youtube links” through midweek maestro Mike Adamson, so must fancy their chances if the coaching team can taper the squad in the run-up to the expected showdown with Tahiti.

England’s blogging supremo Sean Ingle has already called for lottery funding to promote blogging among schoolkids. “If we want success, we have to invest in an Academy system that can deliver a steady stream of young world class performers, able to blog consistently within the talk policy, stay on topic for perhaps hours at a time and not sink to whinging that they could do better than that bloody Russell Brand bloke. This means serious money from the Government is required to furnish our young people with the stamina to blog cricket overnight with the crack Australian outfit, pick an argument over Chelsea and sustain it through the morning into the mid-afternoon, before switching to learned and witty ripostes to James Richardson’s podcast on the upcoming Lazio-Roma derby. Skills like that don’t come cheap,” he said rubbing his hands over a Lottery bid form.

Rumours abound that should the introduction of blogging be successful in Beijing, the IOC are seriously considering replacing the swimming events with OBOing. Britain again are expected to be strong in all OBO disciplines especially “freestyle” where Rob Smyth is world ranked number one and unbeaten for five years in the discipline which requires sustained writing about anything other than the event ostensibly being reported. The “backslap” is another strong event for Britain. “We have a proven squad of OBOers who are seasoned practitioners in the art of congratulating themselves and laughing about their own, so-called, witty interventions” said veteran OBOer Andy Bull.

It seems the only cloud on the horizon for Britain in the Olympic Blogging events are the newly introduced WADA compliant dope testing regime extended to cover alcohol and other recreational drugs. “The squad are made up of real and wannabe journalists – we’re always hungover or drunk – it’s in the job description, “ claimed a tearful man only known as MotM.

Given the Big Blogger's genesis in Seani's blog about blogs and much posting about the "community" of bloggers, I'm surprised that no winner so far has made any mention of blogging itself, nor the characters who pop up to let off steam etc.

Maybe next week - but I suspect the three winners will comprise an appreciation of Gilles Villeneuve, a piece on the underlying meaning of England's visit to Croke Park and a piece about playing golf in a snowstorm. Let's see.

I once tried to get sean to send me to Latvia to compete in the ice cricket - no money was forthcoming :o(.

Very funny and well obseved MotM.

I thought a mention of some of the rebel blog, tob competitors being benned, not to mention the British league coming to be dominated by south american and eastern European imports could have got a shout out - not to mention Cally's stats, which infect 81.292 per cent of Italy blogs on a wieghted average. Not counting the three seasins he spent in Padua, and the blogs about Jimmy R - as these are too easy to include.

Having been inspired by the coaching philosophy of a certain footy manager, who dives into bed by his players, I have decided to sever all connections with the men's freestyle blogging side and give my all to the ladies' synchronised blogging team forthwith.